Some Call it Loving

aka Sleeping Beauty

Director - James B. Harris (Boiling Point) 

Starring - Zalman King (Blue Sunshine), Carol White (Prehistoric Women), and Richard Pryor (Superman III) 

Release Date - 1973 

Genre - Drama 

Tagline - "The only act of it's kind in the world.  For Sale"

Format - BluRay (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     I get a lot of films to review.  Most are horror but I do get some thrillers, comedies, dramas, and documentaries to check out.  I'm fine with that because if I reviewed horror everyday then I may turn to murder myself.  Anyway, I always get films in the mail to check out and I love it.  I never know what I'm going to get and I have no idea where these films will take me.  Recently I got the film Some Call it Loving, aka Sleeping Beauty, which was originally released in 1973.  The blu came courtesy of my friends over at Vinegar Syndrome.  I knew nothing about this release and was surprised when I got it.  Most horror fans would have scoffed at the thought of receiving a drama to review but I was actually excited.  I started writing reviews because I wanted to review films that people forgot about or never heard of.  This film fit that perfectly and I thank Vin Syn for sending it my way!

     The film follows a jazz musician who attends a sideshow performance where he encounters a crowd willing to pay one dollar to kiss a girl who is asleep in hopes of waking her.  The young girl fell asleep eight years ago and never wakened.  Now she is the property of the sideshow.  The jazz musician purchases her and uses medication to wake her.  After several days on the medication she finally awakes and finds herself in the musicians mansion with two other women who hold his attention in a strange, new world.

     The artwork for the film let me know this film would be different and boy was it.  This loose drama was a very strange film, and arguably one of the most unique stories I have seen to date.  With that being said, this was a bit difficult to watch at times and others left me rewinding to see what the fuck I missed.  The film is different but it is not for everyone.  The acting in this one is phenomenal by most of the cast but several scenes do feel out of place.  Most of the cast shine but some scenes, due to the way the story is unfolding, have the characters acting strange and unusual.  Some of the scenes make me wonder if the cast themselves knew where this story was going.  The story for this one is not your typical take on the Sleeping Beauty story.  In fact, It barely has anything to do with that mythos.  That is why the film goes by the alternate title Some Call it Loving which is based on the short story by John Collier.  The story is actually pretty fucking weird.  We get a drug addicted Richard Pryor and several characters that absolutely make no since.  The story itself is trippy and tries like hell to fool the viewer and fails at that.  Finally, this release from Vin Syn's sister company Etiquette Pictures has several solid special features including commentary from James B. Harris and Sam Prime, Some Call it History featurette, A Dream so Real featurette, outtakes, booklet, and reversible cover.  Overall, Some Call it Loving from EP is a solid release for a film that I just did not dig.  The film moved at a snails pace and did nothing to hold my attention.  However, fans of romantic drama's will enjoy this especially with all the special features this one has.